Donald Justice
Ode To A Dressmaker's Dummy
Papier-mache body; blue-and-black cotton jersey cover. Metal stand. Instructions included. Sears, Roebuck Catalogue O my coy darling, still You wear for me the scent Of those long afternoons we spent, The two of us
Men At Thirty
Thirty today, I saw The trees flare briefly like The candles upon a cake As the sun went down the sky, A momentary flash Yet there was time to wish Before the break light
Bus Stop
Lights are burning In quiet rooms Where lives go on Resembling ours. The quiet lives That follow us – These lives we lead But do not own – Stand in the rain So quietly
On The Death Of Friends In Childhood
We shall not ever meet them bearded in heaven Nor sunning themselves among the bald of hell; If anywhere, in the deserted schoolyard at twilight, Forming a ring, perhaps, or joining hands In games
Pantoum Of The Great Depression
Our lives avoided tragedy Simply by going on and on, Without end and with little apparent meaning. Oh, there were storms and small catastrophes. Simply by going on and on We managed. No need
The Assassination
It begins again, the nocturnal pulse. It courses through the cables laid for it. It mounts to the chandeliers and beats there, hotly. We are too close. Too late, we would move back. We
Poem
This poem is not addressed to you. You may come into it briefly, But no one will find you here, no one. You will have changed before the poem will. Even while you sit
The Tourist From Syracuse
One of those men who can be a car salesman or a tourist from Syracuse or a Hired assassin. John D. MacDonald You would not recognize me. Mine is the face which blooms in
A Map Of Love
Your face more than others’ faces Maps the half-remembered places I have come to I while I slept- Continents a dream had kept Secret from all waking folk Till to your face I awoke,
The Evening Of The Mind
Now comes the evening of the mind. Here are the fireflies twitching in the blood; Here is the shadow moving down the page Where you sit reading by the garden wall. Now the dwarf
Men At Forty
Men at forty Learn to close softly The doors to rooms they will not be Coming back to. At rest on a stair landing, They feel it Moving beneath them now like the deck
A Birthday Candle
Thirty today, I saw The trees flare briefly like The candles on a cake, As the sun went down the sky, A momentary flash, Yet there was time to wish
Absences
It’s snowing this afternoon and there are no flowers. There is only this sound of falling, quiet and remote, Like the memory of scales descending the white keys Of a childhood piano outside the
To A Ten-Months' Child
Late arrival, no One would think of blaming you For hesitating so. Who, setting his hand to knock At a door so strange as this one, Might not draw back?
Sestina: Here In Katmandu
We have climbed the mountain. There’s nothing more to do. It is terrible to come down To the valley Where, amidst many flowers, One thinks of snow, As formerly, amidst snow, Climbing the mountain,
In Bertram's Garden
Jane looks down at her organdy skirt As if it somehow were the thing disgraced, For being there, on the floor, in the dirt, And she catches it up about her waist, Smooths it
Sadness
1 Dear ghosts, dear presences, O my dear parents, Why were you so sad on porches, whispering? What great melancholies were loosed among our swings! As before a storm one hears the leaves whispering
Anonymous Drawing
A delicate young Negro stands With the reins of a horse clutched loosely in his hands; So delicate, indeed, that we wonder if he can hold the spirited creature Beside him Until the master
Villanelle At Sundown
Turn your head. Look. The light is turning yellow. The river seems enriched thereby, not to say deepened. Why this is, I’ll never be able to tell you. Or are Americans half in love
Love's Strategems
But these maneuverings to avoid The touching of hands, These shifts to keep the eyes employed On objects more or less neutral (As honor, for time being, commands) Will hardly prevent their downfall. Stronger